by Sheela Philomena on  July 09, 2011 at 11:47 AM

For the first time the entire DNA, RNA of a patient with lung cancer has been sequenced by researchers.

The 61-year-old woman patient, whose lung cancer had entered her bloodstream and spread to other parts of her body, had been treated with several types of chemotherapy.

The study used Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), also called Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), to look at all 3 billion chemical bases of the patient’s normal, as well as the patient’s tumour, DNA.

It went further by examining the normal and tumour RNA for whole transcriptome sequencing, which can reveal the possible defects in how proteins are synthesized. This provided an even more intricate view of the tumours biological make up and what might have led to her cancer.